Pantheon

Pantheon is the default desktop environment originally created for the elementary OS distribution. It is written from scratch using Vala and the GTK3 toolkit. With regards to usability and appearance, the desktop has some similarities with GNOME Shell and macOS.

Configuration

Configure Pantheon via switchboardAUR and its plugs (switchboard-plug-*), which must be installed separately. Not all of gnome-control-center's settings panels have been ported. Except plank, all the Pantheon components store their configuration in the org.pantheondconf key, which can be edited with dconf-editor.

Cannot interact with the LightDM Pantheon greeter

Gala crashes on start

Unconfigured gala tries to use default gnome wallpaper, which is absent unless you have the package gnome-themes-standard installed. Install it workaround the crash; it is safe to remove after you configure another wallpaper.

Appearance

Pantheon-terminal transparency

Transparency in pantheon-terminal is not yet fully functional with GTK themes other than the elmentary OS theme. Either use gtk-theme-elementaryAUR, gtk-theme-elementary-gitAUR or add this code to your theme or the override file in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css.

Wingpanel transparency

Wingpanel is transparent by design when using gtk-theme-elementaryAUR or gtk-theme-elementary-gitAUR, and becomes opaque when a maximized window occupies your screen. However, using other GTK themes will produce a solid panel most of the time.

To achieve the former behavior within other themes, add the following lines to the end of its css or the override file in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css:

GTK+ applications surrounded by awful black shadow box

The elementary GTK theme seems to be using its own files and ignoring the ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css user-override config file. This has been reported on https://bugs.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+bug/1592441. To work around the issue, go to the file /usr/share/themes/elementary/gtk-3.0/gtk-widgets.css and look for the following (around line 3669):

White icons in pantheon-files

Currently there seems to be a bug which displays the view icons in the top location in a white colour instead of black. This can be fixed by installing gtk-theme-elementary-gitAUR or, for gtk-theme-elementaryAUR, add the following line to gtk-widgets.css: